Open Access

Fabienne Sahl, Sebastian Zaunseder

• Blood pressure (BP) is a key indicator for cardiac diseases. Although many current works focus on estimating BP using photoplethysmography (PPG), the number of works using imaging PPG, i.e. PPG derived from videos, and works to compare between different PPG settings is limited. This study compares BP estimation methods using regression ensembles across contact and non-contact PPG settings by means of absolute error (MAE), Pearson correlation coefficient and feature importance. Our results show similar BP estimation quality for both contact and non-contact variants. While MAEs are, similar to comparable works, high (≈ 13mmHg and 8mmHg for systolic BP (SBP) and diastolic BP (DBP)), particularly for DBP and pulse pressure our analyses yield promising correlation coefficients (> 0.7). We observed notable differences in feature importance underlining the relevance of acquisition setup and processing strategies. This work highlights the potential of iPPG for BP estimation, although furtherBlood pressure (BP) is a key indicator for cardiac diseases. Although many current works focus on estimating BP using photoplethysmography (PPG), the number of works using imaging PPG, i.e. PPG derived from videos, and works to compare between different PPG settings is limited. This study compares BP estimation methods using regression ensembles across contact and non-contact PPG settings by means of absolute error (MAE), Pearson correlation coefficient and feature importance. Our results show similar BP estimation quality for both contact and non-contact variants. While MAEs are, similar to comparable works, high (≈ 13mmHg and 8mmHg for systolic BP (SBP) and diastolic BP (DBP)), particularly for DBP and pulse pressure our analyses yield promising correlation coefficients (> 0.7). We observed notable differences in feature importance underlining the relevance of acquisition setup and processing strategies. This work highlights the potential of iPPG for BP estimation, although further research is needed to fully understand the advantages and limitations of both contact and non-contact methods.…